Need some advice on cat aggression!
My family has a 17 year old female calico who has been the only cat in the house for the past 10 years. She's a typical aloof calico although she's gotten soft in her old age. She's incredibly healthy for her age but in the past few years has had to switch to wet cat food for digestion issues.
We recently (~9-10 months ago) rescued a young male tiger who showed up one day out of the woods. Our best guess was that someone had dumped him that night, as he was clean with no ticks or scrapes. He looked around 8 months old as he was small but not malnourished.
Unfortunately, the female took an immediate dislike to him (understandable as she has been the only cat for many years) while he figured out he enjoys antagonizing her. There have been daily interactions when he gets too close to her and she warns him off with a hiss and a swipe in the air. We have also had a problem with him eating her food, as she normally grazes throughout the day but he scarfs down everything in sight immediately. This has resulted in her losing weight while he has gained weight, and we've had to switch back to feeding her dry food which is not the best for her digestion.
More unfortunately, the male has (slowly) learned he would probably beat her in a fight. He's graduated from staring at her from a safe distance to actually body-slamming her by surprise a few times. So far there have been no injuries, as neither of them has actually used claws and they break apart almost immediately. However, due to her age and the weight difference, we're worried he's going to actually hurt her soon or the stress of constantly trying to avoid him is going to make her ill.
It's gotten to the point that we're thinking of rehoming him. He's a sweetheart but is incredibly stubborn and slow to learn, and everything we've done so far (squirt bottle, yelling/clapping, separation in another room) has done nothing. He has actually learned to hate the squirt bottle, the problem is it simply doesn't stop him.
Obviously we'd rather not rehome him as we love the little doofus but we're very concerned about the female's health. Any advice would be helpful!
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/bsf7rj/cat_aggression/
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